6th Sunday after Trinity, Year A. St Mary’s, Northolt.
The observant amongst you will have noticed that in my sermons so far I haven’t really touched on our New Testament readings, which are from Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
This isn’t because I think Paul’s letter to the Romans isn’t important, although it is true that I do not think it has the priority that some people think it should have in the New Testament canon.
It isn’t that I don’t want to talk about the messages that Paul has in Romans. I think Paul has some very important messages in Romans. But they are also very complicated messages that he is sending, not because this is a theological textbook but because he is writing a letter to a church that is in very particular circumstances, a church he did not found or have any relationship with before this letter, and a church that had probably been warned that many of his views were regarded as wrong by the church in Jerusalem. This is why he is at pains to construct a very complex and subtle argument to defend his views but also to demonstrate his orthodoxy.
For these reasons, I believe that Romans isn’t an epistle that you can just jump into the middle of, or sample verses from out of context. It needs to be read very carefully in its context, and given the lectionary is almost halfway through it at this point, I feel it is too late to try and contextualise the readings that we are currently getting. Plus I don’t pretend I understand Romans myself, yet.
The early church context that Paul is part of would have been very in tune with Jesus’ parable of the sower, which Paul and they would have known from oral tradition and stories that were being told and retold about Jesus life and death in their church meetings even though the Gospels as we know them hadn’t been written by this stage.
The early church knew all about different reactions to Jesus’ message of the kingdom. Jesus himself encountered them even during his ministry.
It seems incredible that people could not want to listen to the message of the kingdom, especially when combined with the miracles and healing that Jesus brought with it. How could anyone not be uplifted by a vision where everyone is raised up and brought into the presence of God. Where all are included in the God’s kingdom, rich and poor, inside and outsider, male and female. Where God’s covenant with Abraham is finally fulfilled – when all the people of the earth are blessed and restored to their rightful place with God. Where Israel can rest from their labours as God’s priestly race, knowing that in bringing God’s blessing to all the earth, they have achieved the task that God has given them.
And yet…
And yet it is sadly a part of our fallen, sinful, human condition that all too often such a message isn’t one we find uplifting. Satan all too easily works in our hearts to make us envious and jealous. We don’t look to our own happiness or wealth as something to be enjoyed as an absolute, but only as something to be compared with that of others.
We are happy because we have more than others, and we are downcast because others have more than we do. Satan works in our hearts so that we are rocky ground for the seeds of God’s message to fall on.
We live in a time of extraordinary plenty. We take for granted so many essential things that generations before us did not know. We turn on taps and clean, healthy, clear water comes out, rather than having to trek to a deep well to pull up water by hand. We expect our children to survive childhood – indeed when a child is lost to us it is a matter of devastating anguish, rather than being an expected outcome as it would have been only a hundred and fifty years ago.
And yet, people are more unhappy, more anxious, less satisfied. Modern communication enables us to see others who we think have more than we do, and modern communication enslaves us into algorithms that prey on our insecurities and our envy and our jealousies, so that that can make more money off us.
The gospel gives us an antidote to this modern culture of materialism, envy and comparison. The Gospel gives us that absolute truth that is God, and empowers us to see that it is only our relationship with God that has value in this world. It is only by comparison with that relationship that anything else has any value at all, and the value that it has is in proportion to how it lives out the truth of that relationship. Our relationships with each other are only valuable in how much they embody our relationship with God. Our love for each other can only ever be a reflection of our love for God, and that is only ever a place reflection of God’s love for us.
Sometimes this gospel message falls upon stony ground and gains no purchase. There are now, as there have always been, those who wilfully close their hearts to Christ’s message. What can we do in such circumstances? Well, we can pray and we can look to God’s generous mercy. God is always ready and reaching out to us whenever we are ready to receive him.
Sometimes this gospel message may fall upon shallow earth. We all know people who have heard Christ’s message and embraced it enthusiastically, but then it lacks nourishment and withers away, and they move on, looking for something else to sustain them. It is our duty as the church to help nourish these early seedlings; to reach out and welcome those whose faith needs nourishing and help provide that nourishment – help it grow those deep roots.
Sometimes the gospel message does take root, but then the busyness and confusion of modern life can overcome it. People fall away from the faith because they go to university, or because their job gets to busy, or because looking after a family takes too much energy. It is hard to find time in the busy schedule of modern life, and while I would never equate attendance at church with faith, being part of a worshipping community does help sustain faith, does keep habits of prayer alive, does give us the spiritual food of the communion table. We need to help those whose lives are crowded to find what space they can in those lives for God – we need to go and meet them where and when they have that space.
And sometimes the gospel message bears fruit. We see that in JP who we are sending out today as a gift to the wider church. We can see fruitfulness in JP here, and I am sure we will see even more fruitfulness in the future. Jesus talks about thirty-fold, or sixty-fold or even a hundred-fold, but fruitfulness is not a numbers game. It is about quality, not quantity. If our fruitfulness is that we have a deeper relationship with God, then we are blessed. If our fruitfulness is to help just one other person have a deeper and more beautiful relationship with God, then we are doubly blessed. God does not call each one of us to fill stadiums or revival tents – some of us one day might, but he lovingly only calls us to be faithful to Him, to grow deep in our faith with Him, and to heed His call, whatever that might be.
Amen.